February 20, 2014
Dear Everyone:
One of the nice things about being
retired is having time to do other
things besides working.
So, when the president of the Mt Diablo Chapter of
ARMA looked directly
at me while saying, “We need volunteers…” of course I volunteered.
After all, I have “nothing but” time, right?
What did I “volunteer” for?
Every Spring the four Northern California ARMA Chapters (Golden Gate,
Silicon Valley, Mt Diablo and
Greater Sacramento) sponsor a half-day
Seminar on (what else?)
Records Management.
Putting a Seminar together takes a lot of work and planning.
So I “volunteered” to help.
So far, “helping” has consisted of calling in to a Conference Call every
other week, or so. Others
have leaped in to take charge of collecting all the money (Greater
Sacramento); finding a venue and food (Silicon Valley, but it was their
turn to “host”); hook and pull in Speakers (the Region Coordinator and
various Chapter Leaders) and so on.
Because the Seminar is being held in
Silicon Valley (they being tired of
coming up to Oakland every year) it was “natural” to want to bring in
some computer experts. In
fact, the “theme” this year is (not kidding) “Exposing Computer
Technology for RIM Professionals.”
So one of the sessions will be an expert panel of computer people
to answer computer-related questions.
Naturally they will want the questions placed in advance, so the experts
will know what’s coming.
This isn’t exactly a beauty pageant.
The call for questions went out last week.
So I sent an email out to “family and friends” asking for
questions. Many thanks to
the two-and-a-half people who responded.
Interestingly enough, 75% of the “respondents” all brought up the same
thing:
printers.
As in, “Why can’t I just hook my computer to any printer and print the
%&#*-ing page?” Translation:
“When will the computer and printer manufacturers pull their
heads out of the sand and set some industry-wide standards so that ‘any’
computer can hook up with ‘any’ printer long enough to just print a
simple document?” Sure, if
you want something fancier you’ll download the “drivers”, etc., but
simple printing should be, well, simple.
Shouldn’t it?
Remember when having access to computers was supposed to usher in the
“Age of the Paperless Office”?
Poppycock suitable for fertilizing rose bushes.
People will always want to print things.
Back in the late 1970s, somebody came up with a great idea:
The
Telecopy.
Ever hear of it? The
idea was, you had a page in one place, like
Los Angeles.
You needed to send that page to someone in
San Francisco.
You had a Telecopy machine in your office.
You called the San Francisco office where they had a similar
machine. You plugged the
handset of your phone into your machine while your counterpart did the
same at the other end.
The two machines made “funny noises” until they synchronized with each
other, then your machine transmitted a copy of the page to the other and
everybody was happy. Instant
communication. What a great
idea.
Only one problem: You pretty
much had to have the exact same make and model in both locations.
If you had one version and the other office had a different one,
problems occurred. Then you
called “Technical Support”.
Over time, standards began to emerge.
Were both machines set to the same “speed”?
Were you both using the same “modem settings”?
I actually had a helpful person in “Technical Support” who said,
“I’m sending you a ‘Mickey Mouse Test Page’.”
And a few minutes later, there was Mickey appearing at my end.
It even had some “helpful” notations like “Are my ears round?
Is the box in the lower left
corner square
or rectangular?” I found out
later that the “Test Page” had actually been created at a
Disney office
and was quickly adopted as a “standard” among the various “Technical
Support” persons worldwide.
Eventually, the manufacturers realized that they were just shooting
themselves in the foot by “insisting” that all customers use only their
“make and models”. People
got disgusted and stopped using the pesky things.
Until standards were set for all machines.
Suddenly, everyone was using Telecopies.
They were even accepted in the courts as a “reasonable
facsimile”. Which was soon
shortened to simply “fax”.
When I was buying/selling a home, they told me I could sign the papers
at one real estate office and they would “fax” them to the other.
Perfectly acceptable.
So, you see, you have heard of the Telecopy, just by a different name:
“Fax”.
Here’s hoping that the computer and printer manufacturers will,
eventually, catch on to the same idea:
Make it easy enough for everyone to use.
Meanwhile, the “other 25%” of respondents (i.e., our nephew, “Trevor”)
wanted to know: “How to keep
track of all those passwords.”
Good question. I
passed them both on to the Region Coordinator, who is running the whole
show. It will be interesting
to see if either of them get asked, or even answered at the Seminar next
month.
Love, as always,
Pete
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